It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)
by vasoline
Summary: I banged my head against the table leg and let out a groan, which soon turned into a laugh. Angela joined in. I wasn't sure if she was laughing at what she said or my nose really was that ugly. Either way, I was grateful for the sound.


Literally this is just a random one shot of a random day in Curly's thoughts lol

* * *

 **It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)**

 _you follow, find yourself at war_  
 _watch waterfalls of pity roar_  
 _you feel to moan but unlike before_  
 _you discover that you'd just be one more person crying._

- _\- Bob Dylan_

* * *

I was named after my dad, Charles Richard Shepard Sr. Usually, the name went to the first born but Ma took a little more convincing than most. My dad always wanted to name a kid of his after himself, my Ma thought all kids should have their own original names so they felt special. After awhile of convincing, she broke down, and then here I was: Charles Richard Shepard Jr. I loved that as a kid, I would always tell Tim that dad loved me more, that's why he gave me his name. It got Tim every time, as soon as I said it he would have me pinned down and we would wrestle until eventually I lost. Every time.

My dad ran a garage back in the day. It was pretty popular. He was always swamped with customers because he charged fair fees and did a bang-up job on every car he worked on. That's what my Ma always said attracted her to my dad in the first place: his passion for anything he put his mind to. He would work just as hard, and _happily_ , fixing the grout in between the bathroom tiles as he would at his cars. He would make you think it was the most glamorous task in the world.

He lost that garage in hard times but he never came home without enough dough to put food on the table for us. He got a factory job, and surprisingly, he never lost that passion. He would come home every night after a long shift and he whole body would seem dragged down with exhaustion. But as soon as I, or Tim, or even Angela came to the door to greet him, the familiar glint was back in his eye and he suddenly had the energy to pick us up in his arms and toss us around until we laughed so hard our stomachs hurt or Ma called out for dinner. Whichever came first.

Sometimes he would tell me I was his easiest kid. I don't know how true that was since I was always getting into dumb shit like climbing telephone poles or getting into an intense game of chicken with lit cigarettes. But when I questioned him, he told me that stuff was easy. He would say "you can put a band-aid on all your messes, son," and he would laugh. He told me that Tim was hard because you could ever tell what was on his mind and with Angela she always had too much on her mind so he never knew what to deal with first. With me, apparently I was an open book. I wasn't quite sure how I felt about that at the time. Now that I'm a little older, I'm sorta proud of it.

When I was fourteen, my dad asked me to go on a fishing trip, which was not out of the ordinary. I had been going fishing with my dad ever since I could manage to hold a rod. I liked it, it was the only thing I could manage to sit still for. But at fourteen, I thought other things were more important than going fishing with my old man: drinking and picking up girls. I told my dad no and I spent that weekend at a friends, getting way more drunk than any freshman should. My dad loned the trip. He didn't get many days off, he worked a ton of overtime, and he said he wasn't going to let me ruin his fun. I had rolled my eyes and tossed my jacket on before running out the door.

That was the last time I saw him. Two nights later I was sitting on my friend's couch, watching some television and eating some greasy burgers his mom had fried up in an effort to rid myself of the terrible hangover I had achieved from my weekend binge. The phone rang but neither of his moved, we both didn't notice his mom too busy cleaning dishes in the kitchen to grab the telephone. It rung again and this time, my friend's mom picked it up. I vaguely remember hearing her gasp and then pausing for a moment before calling out my name. I guess it just didn't register back then.

Ma was on the other line and she was blubbering so much I couldn't make out a single thing she said. Tim had to take the phone from her and break me the news. Immediately, I let the receiver fall from my grip. My friend's mom watched me with wary glances while my friend just looked up in confusion until his mom whispered something in his ear that made his eyes grow wide. I felt numb. I didn't think it was real. Then suddenly a wave of guilt washed away the numbness. It was _my_ fault.

My dad was dead. His body had washed up on the side of some lake and a Park Ranger had discovered it. It was assumed that a storm hit while he was too far offshore. His boat tipped over and he never made it above water to see another day. I was supposed to be there. Every other year, I had been there. I could have helped him but instead I decided to spend my time getting black out drunk. My dad hated water, despite his love of fishing. He could swim fine but the water sometimes shocked him and he forgot to move. He had a bad incident as a kid, a near-death experience, and he never got over it. That's why he never went fishing alone, I had known all of this, but I had ignored all of it.

At his funeral, I didn't say a word. I just hid in the back with people who hardly knew him. Angela had a whole spiel about how noble he was and Tim had a bit saying that their dad was the best man he knew. I agreed with everything they said but somehow I couldn't put anything I wanted to say into the right words. Pony said he would help me but even that didn't work either. Everything I said just came out in a jumble of nonsensical sentences that even Pony, with that huge brain of his, couldn't organize them. I didn't know how to honour a man who had given me everything when I had given him nothing in return.

Pony told me not to think like that. He didn't understand, he didn't kill his father.

When I walked into the house after putting my father six feet under, it didn't feel the same anymore. The air felt cooler and the colours seemed darker. His shoes were still in the porch and Tim had to remove them, which meant shoving them in his closet, because Ma would start sobbing every time she saw them. She locked herself in her room that night and didn't come out for two days. Angela was worse, she didn't come out of her room long enough that I didn't see her for a whole week.

It didn't take long for the money to run out. I tried to get a job but I failed every interview I got and I was lucky enough to even get one. I didn't know how to do up a resume so I tried just walking into places and asking for a job. Most people turned me away instantly.

Tim had other ideas. Suddenly, he was never home and when I saw him around town he was with some of the River Kings and everything they were doing always seemed hush-hush. But he did start bringing in money somehow. I wasn't all that naïve, I was old enough that I suspected it wasn't coming from any of the places _I_ applied. It wasn't enough for Ma, she hooked up with some guy named Mike just a couple months after and got hitched to him a couple months after that. She had gotten heavy on the bottle by that time. She had to be to marry a guy like Mike and not realize that her kids were spiralling out of control and that Mike was definitely not helping the situation. He was a drunk, he was mean, and he was lazy. But he had come into some sort of inheritance and I guess that was what Ma was attracted to. His money. But if he had money, I never seen any of it.

Angela did not handle the Mike situation well and I couldn't blame her. She went from mourning to lashing out in a minute. Angela was never a sweetheart, but suddenly she was nasty. She would pack on the make-up and dress like she was twenty, though at this time she was just turning fourteen to my fifteen. It worried me and I tried to talk to her but she never listened to me. Tim didn't notice it until it was too late, since he was never home. Then he blamed me for letting it happen.

When Mike officially moved in, I realized he was more than just a lazy drunk, he was a creep. I caught him hitting on Angela one day when I came home from The Dingo. She looked scared and at that time I hadn't seen her look that way in awhile. I saw red instantly. I chewed him out for it and he just backed away.

"If she didn't want the attention, she wouldn't look that way." Mike had said.

"I don't give a shit how she looks," I had seethed at him. "She's your stepdaughter, she's _fourteen_. You keep off her."

I don't recall exactly who started it. It was probably me. But soon after, I felt my fist come in contact with the flesh of Mike's nose over and over again. He got a couple swings in on me, too. He was drunk so they hardly landed. I heard Angela crying but I didn't stop until Tim came up behind me and yanked me off.

"What the hell did you think you're doing?" He had said, pulling me away from Mike. I gave Mike one more dirty look and spit at him. To this day, I can still see him chuckling but I never found anything funny.

"If he didn't want to be hit," I had drawled out. "He wouldn't look that way."

Tim had given me a whole lecture on how things would get better if I stopped being an idiot about them. But I stood in the archway of the kitchen, two years later at seventeen years old and watched as Mike beat up my mom I cursed myself, for the first time in a long time, for being such an idiot and not appreciating the dad that I had.

Tim said things would get better but nothing had gotten better, things had only gotten worse. Tim told me to stay out of it but would he stay out of it if he had stood where I was right now and saw our mother fighting so hard just to stand?

"What the _fuck_ do you think you're doing?" I hollered at Mike. He stopped for a moment, releasing my mom long enough that she could cower away.

"Your mom thinks it's alright to get on with other men," Mike said to me. "I just had to teach her a little lesson. You understand, right? Man to man?"

"No, I don't," I said. Angela brushed up beside me, moving my arms out of her way to peek into the kitchen. "Ma's a grown woman. She don't need any lessons. Especially not from you."

Angela took one glance at our mom and gasped. I hadn't really stopped to take in the damage until then. She seemed crippled, hunched over in the kitchen chair. She had the blood and bruises to back that up.

"You're right," Mike nodded. "Your mom doesn't need the lessons, _you_ do. You never learned to keep your damn mouth shut."

"I don't need anything from you."

Angela tugged on my sweater as a warning. "Curly, don't egg him on. You don't need this."

She was right about that. I didn't need this. Somehow I always found myself in situations like this and I wasn't dumb enough to just let them go.

"I don't mean to, Angel," I whispered back. "He doesn't give me a choice."

If Mike was drunk, I could always beat him. But right now Mike was sober. When Mike was sober, I got beat to a pulp. He knew how to throw a fist sober and he always wore a lot of rings. I towered over the man but I was lanky as hell and Mike had muscle built up from years of bar fights.

Angela slid past the chaos and took up a seat next to Ma, throwing an arm over her shoulders as she reeled. I briefly thought of my dad and how heartbroken he would if he saw how his family turned out. It almost made _my_ heartbreak. Ma had replaced the perfect husband with a guy who didn't know how to do anything but bitch and open a flask of Jack.

I didn't make the first move this time since Angel asked me not to. I didn't even say another word. My mom was safely out of harms way, I didn't need to pick a fight to get even. I knew it wouldn't work out in my favour.

Mike made the first move. A blow to the stomach. I felt the air leave my lungs and I never felt it go back in, Mike didn't give it a chance to. I wanted to fight back - that's who I was. At school I picked fights with anyone who looked at me the wrong way or just because I didn't like them. I picked fights with Mike, too. He always deserved it, though. He was always berating Ma or trying to get his greasy hands on Angela and I couldn't stand it. But this time, I just took it. There was no use in fighting him. I was going to lose - I had already fought with one of the Brumly Boys earlier today and didn't have the energy to keep up with Mike. I also knew Tim would be home soon and he would give me an earful for being "hotheaded" or something as he always did if he caught me fighting Mike. Tim didn't think fighting would solve their problems. So I let him beat the shit out of me until I felt like I was going to vomit. I knew he would have kept going but he never got the chance.

Mike was scared of Tim. A lot of people were. But Mike knew that Tim could bury him given the chance so he never tested his patience. When Tim was home, Mike was a saint. Or rather, as saint-like as a bastard could be.

The routine was: Mike would do something stupid and I would get wound up and do something stupid back. Then, Tim had to pull me off of him. But when Tim walked in the front door today, I was on the ground, spitting out blood on the white kitchen tiles. Mike showed no mercy, his boots dug into my ribs again and again. His boots had steel toes, which I found funny because I wasn't sure Mike had worked a day in his life.

For the first time, it wasn't me to lose my cool. Tim lunged at Mike, knocking him into the counter and the old man let out a groan. I was relieved to be spared from the beating I was getting. I laid out flat on the cold floor, letting the coolness soothe the throb in my head.

Tim banged Mike around a bit, smashing his head in with the cupboard doors. It felt almost satisfying to see him be the one that was scared. He left Ma and Angela feeling it plenty of times.

Mike staggered down the hall when Tim let go of him. He threw on his jacket and almost tripped putting on his shoes. Tim must have knocked the brains out of him. I propped myself upright using the wooden leg of the table just in time to see Mike leave and shut the door behind him.

Ma wriggled out of Angela's hold and stood up. She was shaky and tears streamed down her face from bloodshot eyes. She stood in front of me, shaking her head slowly.

"Why do you always gotta start shit, Curly?" She pursed her lips. "Why do you always gotta make a mess of everything?"

"I didn't make the mess, Ma," I tried to say with confidence but my voice broke. A mixture of a bad beating and the fact that my mom didn't see that we all deserved better than Mike. "He was hurting you. I couldn't..."

"He was teaching me a lesson, he don't mean it in a cruel way," she said quietly, cutting me off. "You might need to learn a lesson or two, too, boy."

I watched her step out of the kitchen and turn down the hall to her room. I didn't know how to describe what was feeling. But in that moment, I knew I didn't just lose a dad, I lost my mom along with him. I laughed at the craziness of it all: my mom was angry with me for standing up for her.

Angel squeezed my hand. I hadn't seen her leave her chair but when I turned my head, she was kneeling on the floor in front of me with a dirty rag, cleaning up my splattered blood.

Tim was still stood by the cupboards, leaning against the counter with his head in his hands. He must have felt me looking because he looked up, shooting me an expression I couldn't figure out.

"Curly," he said and something in his tone reminded me of dad. "None of this is your fault. Stop acting like it is. You're just a kid. While you're a bit of a dumbass, your head is always in the right place."

Tim stepped over the blood and Angela and ruffled my hair. For a moment, I thought I was twelve again. Tim had grown up a lot in a short amount of time and in that time, he had gotten cold.

"You might make a mess, kid," he said as he left. "But your messes are always easy. You just gotta pick your ass up and put a band-aid on it."

I leaned back against the leg of the table and looked up at the ceiling. I felt like my dad was in the room with me and maybe Tim could feel that too and that's what made him say that stuff.

"I think I might need more than a band-aid for this," I reached up and felt the bridge of nose which felt more crooked than the last time I touched it. "How bad is it, huh?"

Angel looked up from cleaning the blood on the floor. "I think you might need a full on nose job, Curl. That thing is as ugly as sin."

I banged my head against the table leg and let out a groan, which soon turned into a laugh. Angela joined in. I wasn't sure if she was laughing at what she said or my nose really was that ugly. Either way, I was grateful for the sound.


End file.
